I have added a new post to the Copy Book, a short extract from an address by Rudyard Kipling in 1912 which I have called Why We Study the Classics.
Even then, people were beginning to question the value of learning Latin and Greek at school. Kipling defended the classics, as something that should teach the English to be less insular, more appreciative of peoples distant in time and in place. They should also remind us, he said, that other civilisations share most of our basic values, that we did not invent them, and that it is arrogant and dangerous to try to change them. The classics are a much-needed lesson in national humility.